Remote Sensing Webinar | Leveraging Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics: Fire and Related Emissions for Environmental Health

On Tuesday, 27 September 2022, MDPI and the journal Remote Sensing organized the first webinar in the Remote Sensing series titled “Leveraging Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics Fire and Related Emissions for Environmental Health”.

An introduction was given by the session Chair, Prof. Dr. Parth Sarathi Roy. Dr. Roy is an Earth Observation and Spatial Ecology expert who has pioneered generation of information on natural resources and services using Earth Observation Systems for both India and global programs, inspiring many young scientists of this era. With a glorious career spanning over 45 years, Dr. Roy served the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for 35 years and retired as the Director of Indian Institute of Remote Sensing and Director of Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CESSTEP – United Nations). His contributions have been instrumental in shaping national policies in the field of forestry, biodiversity, conservation science and landscape ecology. Even with an extensive administrative career, his passion for academics and research led him to publish over ~400 research articles in prominent international journals.

The first speaker to take to the stage was Prof. Dr. Talbot Brooks, of Delta State University, Cleveland, MS, USA. He is a Professor of the Practice and Director of The Geospatial Center at Delta State University. He also serves the Director of the UN-SPIDER North America Office. In addition to 24 years of experience in the GEOINT domain, Professor Brooks has 34 years of experience as an emergency responder and is the author of “GIS for Critical Infrastructure Protection”. His presentation was titled “Geospatial Tools for Emergency Service Risk Modelling”.

The second group of speakers were Dr. Shirish Ravan and Dr. Phil Green. They gave a joint presentation on “Space Technologies to Monitor Risks From Fire and Related Emissions, Issue Early Warning and Plan Rapid Response”.

The third presentation was given by Dr. Michael Nolde, of Department of Geo-Risks and Civil Security, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany. He is focussed on the analysis of wildfire events using satellite data. At his current position, he is concerned with the automated extraction of crisis-related information from satellite data. Specifically, he is responsible for a continental scale wildfire monitoring service, which provides burnt area information of ongoing wildfire events for the region of Europe in near real-time. His presentation was on the topic of the “German Remote Sensing Data Center (DLR)”.

Our final speaker for the session was Dr. Parwati Sofan, of the Research Center for Remote Sensing, National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN), Indonesia. Her main research interest is on satellite remote sensing data applications for peatland/forest fires, drought/flood, volcano eruption and environments monitoring. She gave an interesting talk on “Tropical Peatland Fires Detection From Satellite Remote Sensing”.

A short Q+A session, moderated by the chair, followed each talk. The webinar was offered via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found here on Sciforum website. In order to stay updated on the next webinars on Remote Sensing, be sure to sign up for our newsletter by clicking on “Subscribe” at the top of the page.